Advertising:

Whilst generic sites such as Monster, Reed and Jobsite are great for maximum exposure, it can also attract a large number of candidates applying for your roles without the relevant skills and experience.

Top Tip: If you haven’t used the specific site before, more often than not, the smaller companies offer free trials for the first ad you post – get free advertising where you can!

Recruitment Agencies:

First find out who the best and most niche agencies are to add benfit – do a simple search online to see which company advertises the most amount of jobs similar to yours.

Top tip: type the job title into google and see who the recurring agencies are – once armed with the top 3, make some calls and negotiate prices.

Pro’s: Access to their CV database – more often than not, good agencies will have a pool of candidates which never post their CVs publicly.

Cons: Using agencies can be costly, so make sure you negotiate a good price, but remember – the cheapest option isn’t always the best option. Through experience, it’s best to stick to the companies which charge 15-20% on basic salary.

Top tip: To gain commitment from agencies, pencil out interview slots in the diary to show you are serious. This in turn will make them work that little bit harder to find candidates in the required timeframes!

Social Media:

Pro’s: Most of the time it’s free, and it’s the most effective word of mouth tool there is! Facebook, Twitter and Linked In are fantastic tools to find good candidates and to raise the profile of your company with little graft.

You can build relationships in advance of needing someone

Top tip: take advantage of Linked In and how it works as a free CV database where you can pick and choose key words to keep your search as specific as possible.

Cons: Most candidates still like to keep Facebook and Twitter as personal social media platforms. Therefore the audience searching for jobs on your fanpage or the number of people publicly highlighting their skills for you to search for will be a lot smaller when compared to LinkedIn and regular job websites.

Top tip: If you havent established relationships with people in advance a straight head hunting approach may not be welcome. Especially if you do it publicly – so don’t.

Job Boards:

Pro’s: Negotiate a week’s free trial to access the job website’s CV database – sometimes, that’s all you need to round up a list of hot candidates actively looking.

Top tip: do a historic search to find candidates who previously posted their CV and build a contact list for future roles. They may have only been looking 6 months ago, but could potentially be searching again within a year.

Cons: Everyone has access to the same candidates so it becomes highly competitive and challenging to secure candidates found this way.

Recommendations/Staff Referrals:

Pro’s: People generally only recommend those they feel are up to the job and worth talking about – this should ensure candidates introduced this way are of a certain quality and more often and not are exclusive to you.

Cons: Your judgement could be clouded if coming from personal referrals, so make sure you interview them in the same way you would any other candidate.

Top tip: offer referral incentives to staff – lunches, vouchers are great alternatives to cash which are attractive but won’t necessarily break the bank!

In Summary:

Do your research first!

Stick to subject matter experts and targetted sites to save time and get better candidates